


Soap, soup and salvation

by sshysmm



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: (sound of author weeping), Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Comfort Food, Cooking Lessons, Danny/Jerott if you wanna see it there, Dialogue Heavy, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Friendship, Gen, Jewish Adam Blacklock, Jewish Character, Jewish Danny Hislop, Jewish Identity, LGBTQ Jewish Character(s), Paris (City), Tooth-Rotting Fluff, author has a poor understanding of synthesisers, non-binary danny hislop, the band Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23444401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: Spring, 1989,Checkmate-era inthe Band AU.Adam Blacklock never learned to cook, but he wants to impress - and to bring comfort to - the widow Kate Somerville. While Francis Crawford's band records an album in Paris, it seems the perfect opportunity to get lessons from Danny Hislop. Adam's first lesson is chicken soup: comfort food staple and Jewish cure-all.A character study, essentially, with background on Danny and Adam in the AU and mild hints at broader angst concerning Francis and also Jerott. On the whole extremely fluffy though.
Relationships: Adam Blacklock & Danny Hislop, Adam Blacklock & Jerott Blyth, Adam Blacklock & Jerott Blyth & Danny Hislop, Adam Blacklock/Kate Somerville, Jerott Blyth & Danny Hislop
Kudos: 2
Collections: Lymond fics set in the Band/'80s AU





	Soap, soup and salvation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Erinaceina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinaceina/gifts).



> From a prompt by [Erinaceina](http://erinaceina-blog.tumblr.com/) for Jewish characters cooking together in the Band AU. It rapidly spiralled out of control and is now, apparently, a 6,000 word character study with abuse of synthesisers. Also HUGE thanks to Erinaceina for the advice and tips and recipes <3  
> -Usual disclaimer that Hamal = Kuzúm.  
>   
> I am not Jewish, non-binary, disabled or of Pakistani heritage. I have tried to be entirely respectful and avoid harmful stereotypes - if you think anything is amiss I welcome constructive criticism and questions, particularly if you know of particular resources you think I should be using. If any 'he/hims' crept in for Danny I can but apologise and ask that you kindly point them out :)

_ All ill-fated sorts _

_ Who sleep on doorways and in alleyways _

_ Take a stumble to the corner _

_ There's heavenly music played _

_ No more taking recreation _

_ With your dark defeated friend _

_ They who seek the consolation of the bottle _

_ Never win _

_ Soap, soup and salvation _

_ Tired hearts sing in jubilation _

_ [ _ _**Lone Justice - Soap, Soup and Salvation, 1985** ] _

"Kneidlach," Danny Hislop sighed. "Are in certain ways like gender. People think there are two simple offerings: floaters or sinkers. But in actual fact there is a whole world of options. You bring yourself to the mix, and you pick and choose the elements that speak to you."

Adam Blacklock rubbed his sleep-starved face patiently. "Danny. It's too early for this. What gender of dumpling do I want?"

"N-no, wait," Adam corrected himself. "What kind?"

Danny's pale, plump lips curled with satisfaction and the keyboardist - whose gender was as mysterious to Adam as the intricacies of Jewish home cooking - plucked a jar of schmaltz from the supermarket shelf. "Accept no substitutes," instructed Danny, placing the chicken fat into the basket. "We should be making our own but I don't want you in my flat overnight, I have other guests to entertain." Danny flipped their fine hair back from their freckled forehead and glided ahead of Adam towards the next aisle. 

Adam stifled a yawn. It was ten in the morning, but it seemed a personal affront to have to be awake before midday. He made himself shuffle afterwards, grateful for Danny's expertise even if it was a struggle to show it. It was humbling, Adam had realised, to find oneself over thirty and incapable in the kitchen: not least when one was hoping to attract the attentions of a kindly, capable, _wonderful_ single mother. Adam emphatically did not want to give the impression that it was Kate Somerville's domestic faculties that drew him to her, not when he saw how hard she worked to lift others up, how she worried about those she loved, and how no one else ever sat _her_ down and treated her to a home-cooked meal and an evening off.

When he was back at his parents' home - a little pocket of Georgia nestled among grey Dundee terraces - Adam was used to the finest meals his ancestors had to offer. His mother took the task of feeding him seriously, because no matter what she did he remained rake-thin and struck through with an aspect of hungry misery. It was an aesthetic completed by the new pink scar across his features and the polio-damaged leg he limped on, although anyone who knew Adam at all found him to be a content and genial person beneath the veneer of gothic melancholy.

Nevertheless, his mother's cloying affection - born out of enduring concern for her sickly child - meant that Adam had never successfully learned the secrets of the Jewish kitchen. That was why he needed Danny's lessons: cast out of the family home at a young and feral age, Danny had learned how to _really_ cook, and had gathered their Bubbe's recipes through a broad-minded great-uncle. Danny said that once one could cook, one never wanted for a place to stay, and had agreed to teach Adam the basics of their shared cultural heritage.

Yet much of what Danny termed essential Jewish cooking left Adam baffled - and much of what Adam expected to purchase was met with equal confusion by Danny. Danny's estranged parents and extended family were Ashkenazim through and through (bar a single, Dunedian, Presbyterian grandparent called Hislop), while Adam - born Adam Baluashvili in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic - had grown up with a mishmash of influences that remained decidedly Gruzini in their leanings. This being the case, a fifteen-minute argument about kishke at the deli counter dissolved into the kind of one-upmanship that could only be settled by a flurry of impulse buys.

Laden with chicken, flour, fat, herbs and vegetables; with latkes, halva and blood-red squares of cotignac; pickled walnuts, lavash and chebureki, and bickering companionably about the merits of pomegranate seeds in cooking, they returned to Danny's garret lodgings on La Rue Pavée and made their way ponderously up the creaking wooden steps.

Danny beckoned down at Adam with a free hand and Adam sighed and handed the shopping he'd been carrying up to his friend.

"You had to choose the at-attic rooms, didn't you?" Adam gasped, his stammer heightened by the ache in his leg and his shortness of breath.

"Well how was I to know you'd want to treat me as your own personal Delia Smith?"

Adam grunted, steadying his bad leg with one hand and gripping the flaking bannister with the other. "We could have used my flat."

"I've seen that sorry excuse for a kitchen. No thank you," Danny sniffed. Then they paused and looked down at Adam. "Are you ok though?"

Steadying his breathing, Adam managed to look up with a smile. "Y-yeah. I bet - I bet the views are worth it."

Danny grinned. "They are pretty good."

The little garret was bright as an artist's studio, white-washed and tidy, decorated with a tasteful minimalism that served to highlight Danny's own flamboyance. The band had been recording in Paris for a matter of weeks, but Danny had personalised the space with ruthless speed: navy blue rag-rugs formed paths across the white floorboards and gauzy grey pashminas divided the sleeping area from the sitting room of the tiny flat.

The views from the floor-to-ceiling windows were as promised: at the end of the street was the elegant, pale face of the Agoudas Hakehilos Synagogue, and beyond it the arching top of l'Église Saint-Gervais peeked up above a hazy stretch of lead-blue rooftops. Away to the south-east loured the towering, Baroque columns of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, uncharacteristically dark beneath the low sky. With a little imagination, from among the distant greys of tower blocks, one might even glimpse the cathedral on the river. Citywide, the views were dotted with fresh sprigs of green, and white window frames glowed when scudding clouds moved aside.

Adam smiled. "I'm going to have to come back and paint that."

Around him, Danny flitted between the kitchen and sitting areas in acid-wash jeans and a blouse that, had he been pressed to describe it, Adam would have said was designed to evoke the idea of unicorn vomit. Even for the brief shopping trip, Danny had managed to apply their customary vibrant make-up: mint green and pink clouds of eye-shadow had been chosen to match the blouse, and tacky plastic stars glittered and swung from Danny's earrings with every toss of their chin or extravagant gesture.

"Sit, sit," Danny ushered Adam into one of the woodworm-pocked chairs at the little kitchen table. "You can take notes for the first steps. I'll make tea."

Adam dutifully sat and rummaged in a pocket of his jacket for the notebook he used for song-writing. At the front were scraps of lyrics shared by Lymond with the band, sketches and scrawled suggestions of melodies, and questions Adam intended to put to bandmates when they became relevant. At the back of little pad, written in bold, cursive letters, were the words 'Flaw Valleys - landline' and an English telephone number that Adam had already memorised. He smiled at the promise of what Danny was teaching him and turned the page to write out the recipe title.

Danny fussed and arranged the ingredients, clattered the kettle and teapot around, got out a collection of thin, chipped plates, and furnished the tiny table with their deli purchases and a pot of Wissotzky.

Turning back to the kitchen, Danny retrieved a garish pink pinny that Adam recognised from a Moscow flea market. Danny tied an impeccable bow in the small of their neat back and checked that Adam was attentive.

"Chicken in pot," Danny demonstrated. "You're going to have to buy a pot," they added flatly as Adam scribbled. "Add water to cover..." Danny continued to describe the steps as Adam wrote them down, until the stock came to a rolling boil and Adam joined Danny at the counter to chop vegetables.

The little flat filled with the savoury smell of chicken and the tall windows misted up, smudging the bright spring light. Adam prepared the carrots, celery, onion and herbs while Danny skimmed the froth and scum from the boiling pot and hummed Frère Jacques. Within a handful of minutes, the vegetables had been submerged in the clear broth, the lid was on the pot, and they were back at the table, sitting down to raspberry tea and fresh deli treats. Danny added a homemade paté and a jar of rollmops to the spread and hung the pink pinny up.

"And then we leave it for a couple of hours? That wasn't so hard," Adam mused.

"You're making the dumplings, _mon ami_ ," Danny said warningly and pointed towards the pinny. "Chef's apron, too."

Adam sighed. With Danny it was best to argue only as and when it was necessary. For now, he was hungry from the smells of the broth and the morning's unaccustomed activity.

Danny saw Adam's gaze rove over the food and grinned.

"Okay, first round: lavash with chicken liver paté and pickled walnuts, versus latkes and rollmops. I'll give you a free victory on the chebureki, they smell delectable," Danny moved with swift, precise gestures to share out the savouries and tutted as Adam fished a walnut direct from the jar with his long fingers.

Gesturing with a wedge of lavash, Adam surveyed what was before him. "It's not fair smothering this in your home-made paté, Danny. It should be served with badrijani nigvzit."

Danny stared, dead-pan, at Adam and waited for an elaboration.

"Aubergine and spinach dip."

"Does it involve walnuts?"

"Y-yes, but - "

"Why does all your food involve walnuts?" Danny wailed, a look of playful satisfaction adorning their features behind the lavash they held.

"You like walnuts," Adam rose to the provocation.

Danny's lips twisted in a smirk, and they tore a strip of lavash off to scoop up a dollop of fragrant paté. "I like your Mam's walnuts."

"Shut up, Danny, that doesn't even mean anything."

Danny chewed and grinned. "Your Mam loves me. I'm going to get all her recipes, just you watch."

"Good, maybe then you'll t-teach them to me - she won't," Adam snorted, pouring the tea into the two battered cup-a-soup mugs.

"Oh, we'll make a Barefoot Contessa of you yet, young master Blacklock. And all I ask in return..."

"Ahh, here it comes."

"All I ask in return, is that you help me figure out the sound for the new track his lordship dropped on us."

Adam rolled his grey eyes. "Oh, not that..." He helped himself to another pickle and met Danny's candid stare. Adam shook his head and glared, while Danny simply raised exquisitely painted brows in response. "How do you make a song about en-environmental des-destruction into a radio-friendly pop-rock hit?"

Danny shrugged. "The question of the hour! What _does_ poisonous incinerator waste sound like, Adam?"

Balancing a rollmop on his latke, Adam sighed. After devouring the potato pancake in two enormous bites, he leafed through his notebook and pulled out a folded A4 photocopy. " _Haiti Says Philadelphia Garbage Was Dumped By Ship On Its Beach_ ," he read out. "It's disgusting, of course, but does he think that even _he_ can get k-kids dancing to a song about the Khian Sea disaster?"

Danny, tucking into the beef chebureki with glee, flipped their wispy ginger curls back again. "Ours is not to reason why..."

Adam re-read the article Lymond had photocopied for the band members. He re-read the lyrics copied tidily on the back of the paper in Lymond's regular, controlled hand: they spoke from the point of view of the cargo ship, drifting, wandering around the ocean in search of a place to unburden itself, mournful that it would mean spreading the pain it carried to a new and untouched land. It was a sad and angry song, which was fitting, but Adam found it opaque even by Lymond's standards. Perhaps, Adam thought, the lyrics only seemed angry when you knew what Lymond's anger could be like: cold and distant, reigned in and resigned. Most of their audience would probably just hear another ballad.

He nibbled his own half of chebureki thoughtfully. "Do you have the K-Korg here?"

"It's in the studio. I've only got the Emulator."

Adam pulled a thoughtful face and scratched at the scar on his chin. "That may be better. Do you have samples from the Black Sea?"

Danny, licking herring juice and vinegar from fingers that ended in garish pink nail polish, made a sound like a character in a _Carry On_ film. "Seagulls, Maeve? Wind and waves?"

"Exactly," Adam grinned wickedly.

The two of them tidied the table and poured out the last of the tea before decamping to the living space: a cramped area tucked beneath a steeply sloped ceiling, lit by more enormous, curtain-free windows. Danny crumpled onto a battered couch, whose great age was barely concealed by the huge, faded flag of the Azerbaijan SSR that was draped over it. Danny picked up a shoebox and rifled through the floppy discs inside it, searching for the coastal samples.

Adam pulled up one of the kitchen chairs so that he did not find himself stuck forever on the monstrously low item of furniture that Danny was settled on. He helped himself to Danny's acoustic guitar and checked the tuning, strumming some chords speculatively – but he was not sure what he was looking for until he heard what Danny's samples sounded like.

Danny laid the synthesiser across the knees of their acid-washed jeans and after a pause, they had it programmed so that they could switch between various atmospheric scales. With a few adjustments some hauntingly weird sounds could be created, and Danny and Adam's eyes met with cheerful mischief as the keening, electronically twisted cry of a gull rang out when Danny dropped a finger onto the keys.

Time passed too quickly with this new inspiration, and Adam had to peel Danny from the couch in order to continue the lesson in the kitchen. Pleased by the morning's sound experiments, Adam consented cheerfully enough to the inevitable, and bowed his bouffant head of hair so that Danny could drop the pink apron over him and tie it tight around his black t-shirt.

He blitzed matzo crackers in the food processor - "You'll need to get one of those, too," Danny quipped.

"I could just buy the meal from the store," smirked Adam.

Aghast, one elegant freckled hand to the centre of their chest, Danny inhaled. "Don't you dare." Then they waved the hand and peered at Adam's work. "It's fine, you can do that. But you want it really fine, blitz it some more..."

Adam pressed the switch on the processor again and saw Danny staring thoughtfully at it.

"Stop! Hang on, hang on. I'll be back, just wait."

Adam rolled his eyes. "Danny, you're not thinking..." But Danny was already gone, digging in the bottom of a wonky chest of drawers and pulling out a mic and extension cable with neatly tied wiring. Half tripping over the cables in their effort to unreel them and get to Adam before Adam lost patience and started to blitz the matzo meal again, Danny scrambled like a journalist in the front row. Adam held his own hands up and shook his head, promising not to touch anything until Danny was there, mic in hand, synthesiser balanced on a chair, business end of the mic angled towards the food processor.

Danny ejected the Black Sea disc and put a blank in and then nodded at Adam, one finger poised over the record button.

The food processor whined, the matzo meal rattled and hissed like a gritty tornado inside it and Danny's smile broadened as Adam mimed and bopped to the sound. They recorded the bubbling stock next and a screaming, boiling kettle; cutlery on glass and metal, knives whipping through the stems of herbs and dishes knocking together in a full sink. Engrossed, they paid no attention to the steps outside the flat, nor to the hand that pushed the open door inwards.

"Am I early?" Jerott Blyth asked when he was certain Danny had switched the recording off and was not about to pounce on any other unsuspecting utensils.

With unruffled insouciance, Danny turned, not bothering to hide their delight. Adam looked up with bemused apology and nodded at Jerott, who stood, arms folded, leaning against the door, a resigned expression on his dark face.

"Ma tronche de céleri! Ma figure de poulpe! Mon petit, petit chou," Danny exclaimed, spreading their arms wide and gliding forwards.

"Va te faire cuire le cul, Danny." Jerott did not move as Danny approached.

Danny cackled. "Si je fait ça, tu ne pourrais pas supporter ma chaleur..." The ugly fabric of Danny's blouse wrapped around Jerott's stiff form, encircling him in floaty sleeves and vine-strong arms, while Jerott lifted his chin away from impact with Danny's sharp shoulder and failed to repress the smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth.

Danny leaned their face against Jerott's cable-knit jumper and leather jacket and sighed. "Je t'aime, doudou."

Jerott rolled his eyes and did not unfold his arms, but allowed Danny to snuggle against him. "Je sais, puce."

Danny gave the impression they might have stayed there all day, if only Jerott had not sneezed with a violence that nearly shook Danny free on its own. The sneezing fit continued as Danny stepped back and Jerott took out a tissue - while, at a safe distance, Adam seized the opportunity to finish mixing the ingredients for the matzo balls.

"You see, that's why he's in such a foul mood with me," Danny explained dreamily to Adam as Jerott continued to sniffle and splutter. "Poor thing's infected. And your soup is going to cure him."

Adam, whose own French was limited to a very average O-level grade, still understood enough about Danny and Jerott's interactions to translate friendly insults when he heard them. He shook his head and tolerated it as Danny reached up to push his fringe back from his eyes while he mixed the dough. "Infected with what?"

Danny eyed Jerott with a wicked look in those clear blue eyes. "It doesn't matter, Maeve: Jewish penicillin is a cure-all."

Jerott was peering dubiously into the stock pot. He used the cuff of a sleeve to cover his hand and rattled the glass lid to see past the condensation. "I can't smell a thing," he said thickly. "How is this supposed to help?"

"Through the magic of love and you not being a little bitch - sit down and stay out of the way. There are artists at work." Danny shoved Jerott aside and instructed Adam to put the dough in the fridge and gather plates and bowls for straining the broth.

Jerott took the seat he was ordered into and stifled a cough behind his hand. He shivered and did not remove his jacket, but toyed awkwardly with a plastic Bic lighter, tapping it against the chipped veneer of the table. He watched Adam and Danny bustle, each carefully stepping around the chair with the synthesiser on it. "What on earth were you recording?"

Adam, forgetting he was clad in a pink apron and large floral oven gloves, threw his hands up. "The Khian Sea song. We were looking for inspiration."

Beneath the table, Jerott's knee bounced compulsively. He frowned at Adam and then at Danny and the synthesiser and again at Adam until Adam lowered his padded hands and shrugged.

"What _does_ poisonous incinerator waste sound like?" Adam repeated Danny's earlier question.

Jerott covered another hacking cough that exacerbated his own perplexed expression. "Chicken soup, apparently?"

"Chicken soup and seagulls," Danny agreed. "Do you want anything, Jerott? Snacks, tea, water, wine?"

"I take it I can't smoke in here?"

" _Snacks, tea, water, wine_ ," Danny repeated.

Jerott sighed. "Oh, whatever. It's all wasted on me with this cold."

"Oh, don't, you'll make me take pity on you," Danny said dramatically, and retrieved three cloudy old wineglasses from a cupboard behind Adam's shoulder. Danny poured three half-measures of a pale and weak white wine and handed then out.

With Danny's help, Adam fished the chicken and the vegetables out of the broth, strained the liquid and set aside that which would be needed later from that which would not. While they worked, Jerott reached for the ukulele that hung on the wall by the doorway by a tatty piece of string and began to strum a melancholy ballad that Danny knew the French lyrics to.

Adam was part-way through rolling the chilled dough into a vast collection of dumplings, when a thought occurred to him through Danny's singing and the plucking of the ukulele. "Jerott, do you know that Bobby Darin song? _Somewhere, beyond the sea..._ "

Jerott raised a dark brow and adjusted his fingering to strum the opening chords, light and soft on the short strings.

Danny eyed Adam with admiration. "You sly dog. We can use it as the intro - no, outro?"

"It's got the key changes," Jerott demonstrated, barring the fret and moving his hand up the neck of the instrument. "Open with one key, play the outro in another? Switch it 'round?" He tried to hum along as he played but had to give up and succumb to a coughing fit that was only eased by a swig of the thin wine Danny had served.

"You know..." Adam smiled as Danny fretted impatiently about, searching for a pen to write the chords down with. "We'll get it all planned out, just perfect, the w-whole track ready to go - and in the studio he'll tell us he's written another ten verses, or changed what it's about, or doesn't want to include it anymore..."

Jerott tried to laugh through his cough and Danny let out a howl of despair and shook Adam by the shoulders. "Don't say that, Maeve! We won't let him! Or...we'll just have to release it ourselves as an instrumental. The world is just crying out for a new genre: seagull synth. Kitchen kitsch. Bobby Darin covers played on a stove-top."

"No, I've definitely seen those alongside the Tijuana Beatles vinyl at the market in Montmartre," Jerott shook his head. Danny and Adam shuddered.

Leaving the dumplings to cook in a pot of stock, with the chicken broth strained and waiting, the meat shredded and prepared, they took themselves and the synthesiser back into the sitting area. Jerott sprawled on the low couch with his eyes closed, head back against its misshapen cushions, and Danny sat next to him, an admiring smile playing on their soft lips.

"I'm starving," Jerott grumbled. "Are you following a British 'boil it to shit' recipe?"

Danny punched him in the arm. "Manners. We're feeding you the best cure in the world, and the British have nothing to do with it. Though in case anything does go wrong, actually, _Adam_ is feeding you."

"Yeah, but until you host us in return you can't complain, Jerott. Or I might poison yours deliberately," Adam arranged himself on the chair by the window and folded his arms.

Jerott made a miserable sound. "Can't where I'm staying."

Danny and Adam exchanged a glance and Adam grimaced.

"Doesn't your Mam live in Paris, Jerott?" With calculated self-consciousness, Danny brightened, leaning one elbow on the back of the sofa to gaze at Jerott's profile.

"Danny, stop trying to seduce people's Mums," Adam rolled his eyes.

With a grin, Danny shrugged. "Mams love me! Except for my own, of course. Her loss."

Jerott cracked one eye open and sniffed self-piteously. "I'm not inflicting you on my mother, nor her on you. You'll get your five course Pakistani feast when we've finished with this album."

"Oh!" Jerott started, sitting up a little and rummaging in a pocket of his leather jacket. "I did bring these though." He passed a crumpled plastic bag to Danny, who accepted the offering with reserved curiosity and peered inside.

"Chandrakala." Jerott explained. "They're vegan ones - coconut and raisins I think, from _dixième_. And some macarons. When in Paris..."

"Ooh, tiny, adorable dessert pasties? Maeve, sounds delicious! I'll add them to the desserts..."

Danny shimmied away to the kitchen and returned with the bottle of wine and a jug of water. The three of them chatted and finished the wine as the dumplings continued to cook, and at Adam's prompting Danny remembered to transfer the song notes from the ink-smudged back of their hand to Adam's notebook.

At the little table in the steam-filled kitchen, they tried not to bump elbows and knees as they leaned over their soup bowls. Jerott even removed his jacket and inhaled the humid air appreciatively, conceding that he could, at last, smell something - and that it smelled delicious.

Danny repeated the pronouncement they had made earlier on the matzo balls, enthusing about the consistency and texture of Adam's achievement. "Of course, our dear leader learned to cook his in New York, so they float - I thought I'd won him 'round in Russia, but you know how hard it is to get praise from the maestro..."

"Anything is forgivable, but taking the incorrect approach to dumplings..." Jerott said wryly over a spoonful of broth.

"See, he _does_ understand!" Danny beamed at Adam, who munched proudly on one of the satisfyingly chewy creations.

"And what do you think, Adam? Will your lonely widow be bowled over by your culinary skills?"

Adam smiled shyly at his bowl. "Maybe not quite yet. But I can make a start, now."

Jerott looked at Adam with a piercing, thirsty expression. "What's this?"

Danny covered their mouth in exaggerated embarrassment. " _Whoops_ ," they said, and stood up on the pretence of getting a refill of soup.

"Isn't it enough to want to learn to cook because you're thirty-two and it's about time you learned?" Adam sighed and rolled his eyes, but Jerott's interest did not waver. "And, yes, okay, also so I can offer to cook next time Kate is over here."

"Philippa Somerville's mother?" Jerott's eyes were wide.

"Her name is Kate," Adam said snippily, finishing his soup.

It was Jerott's turn to exchange a look with Danny, and Danny smirked shamelessly while ladling more soup out into everyone's bowls.

Jerott smiled. "That's really sweet, Adam. She's known Francis for so long it will be a novelty to find a man who's capable of acting like a gentleman."

Danny snorted and clattered the ladle against the pot. Adam glared.

"What-what's that meant to mean?"

Jerott shrugged and looked about vaguely. "Nothing! Just that you're a gentleman."

"K-Kate and Francis aren't an item. Never have been," said Adam, sitting up rigidly and staring Jerott down.

Danny glanced at each of their expressions and relished the strange tension at the table.

"Are you sure?" Jerott frowned. "What about at St Mary's-"

"Nope," Adam shook his head. He settled his thin arms on the edge of the table in front of him and Danny leaned forwards, elbows joining Adam’s on the table, settling in for a ringside view of the finishing blow Adam was clearly about to deliver. "You thought everyone at Saint Mary's was sleeping with everyone else, just because you weren't getting any."

Jerott's jaw dropped and his eyebrows shot up. Adam scooped an entire dumpling into his mouth and finished his soup in defiant silence.

"Well that was savage," Danny sucked the remaining herbs and grease from their spoon. "Adam, you realise you have clean up when you commit murder in my kitchen?"

Jerott blinked and opened his mouth again to object while Adam matched his gaze innocently. After a moment, incredulous, Jerott asked: "So, Francis isn't in love with Kate Somerville?"

"Where did you get that idea from?" Danny sipped their wine and eyed Jerott dubiously.

Jerott shrugged and finally looked down at his plate. "Sorry man," he muttered at Adam. "I thought Philippa said something like that when they were round at the summerhouse in Brittany." His cheeks had reddened and he finally concentrated on his soup, ignoring the knowing look that Danny and Adam exchanged yet again. They finished the course in silence.

Danny stood and gathered the empty bowls before laying a hand on Jerott's black hair, which Jerott shook off with a habitual scowl. "Well stop making me feel sorry for you, piteous thing," Danny tutted.

"I don't need your pity, I'm fine," Jerott sniffed, folded his arms and glowered, then unfolded them and picked at a chip in the table lacquer.

"You have a hotel room now?" Adam studied him.

Jerott bit his lip like he was desperate for a cigarette and focussed with hope on the platter loaded with chandrakala, macarons, halva and cotignac that Danny lowered before them. "Yeah."

"Don't go back to that flat," Danny said warningly. "Leave her be."

Jerott grunted and busied himself at the task of devouring the sweets Danny had set out.

Adam shook his head and delicately lifted a slice of pistachio halva from the plate. His voice turned steely and defensive on Jerott's behalf. "She should go and stay in the summerhouse. It's not like she needs to be in Paris right now!"

His mouth full of cotignac, Jerott said nothing but rolled his eyes.

"Really," Adam muttered. "What's her game?"

Danny languidly pulled a flaking half-moon of a chandrakala in half. "Pity isn't absolution, Adam. I'll feed you, _doudou_ , and you can use my kitchen, but stay away from that woman. She's better off without you."

Jerott picked a crumbly chunk of halva apart to get at a pistachio and gave Adam a grateful half-smile, but he addressed Danny. "It's ok, there's nothing to take me back there. Let her have it all."

Danny tilted their head. "Hmm, we can probably work towards something more amicable than that."

Adopting a breezy tone and shaking their head so the star-covered earrings shivered and sparkled, Danny flipped their hand through the air to dismiss the awkward mood. "Ok, Jerott, which is the better dessert? Help us decide.".

"You chose the c-cotignac _and_ the halva," Adam looked up in complaint.

Danny waved another dismissive hand. "Well you got two savoury options."

"You served the lavash with liver paté!"

"We couldn't get any of the dips you wanted and you don't know how to make them!"

Jerott stared at each of them in turn as though one of the three of them had finally cracked and he wasn't sure which it was. His plate was empty and so was his wine glass. "I thought they were both nice."

"Ah- _ha_!" Danny smirked at Adam, who shooed his fingers at the emptiness of Danny's triumph.

"I still prefer macarons," Jerott shrugged, picking up one of the latter from the serving dish. "Something about eating something I'm too lazy to make for myself. But the soup was really good, Adam. I could actually taste it."

Danny stood and gazed down at Jerott with disdain. "I don't know what I expected. Goyishe Apikoros. You'll just have to eat some more, until we've changed your mind."

Adam sucked the crumbs of halva from his fingers thoughtfully. "I don't know, I'm enjoying the illusion that the soup has actually cured him. Maybe we should leave before he starts coughing again, Danny."

"Adam." Danny bristled. "It _has_ cured him."

With vindictive glee, Danny returned laden with all the remaining sweets. Three plates were piled high with delicacies, a bottle of schnapps was laid on the table, and talk drifted to less important subjects.

When, several hours later, Adam obligingly hoovered up the last remaining crumbs of sugar from the cotignac plate, Jerott snored softly on the ancient couch and Danny sang softly over the washing up, it was as peaceful, as content an atmosphere as Adam recalled from Shabbat afternoons at home. He let out a long breath and knocked the last of his schnapps back, its fire racing to combat the full feeling in his stomach.

The flat was cooling as the afternoon wore on beneath a clear sky. Outside the window the city was the same soft pastel colour as the macarons Jerott had brought. "Didn't you say you had other people coming ‘round?" Adam leaned back in his chair to eye Danny, his head upside down and thick hair flopping wildly.

Danny smirked over one shoulder of the pink pinny. "I said at _night_ , Adam. Let him sleep - I'll make sure he's gone before the Marais crowd come up and offend his delicate sensibilities."

Adam stretched and slowly got to his feet, massaging his hip. He took his notebook out again and flicked through the music they'd made that day and the recipe he had learned.

"You should go and call her," Danny watched Adam, their wiry, compact body twisted away from the sink.

Adam laughed nervously and felt his cheeks grow warm. "Oh, n-no. I haven't seen Philippa much this week." He raked a hand through his hair and his gaze lingered on the phone number. "I said I'd call if I had any news about her or Lymond. Neither of them tells Kate anything these days."

Danny made a sound that demonstrated how unconvincing Adam's words were. "I think if _I_ were stuck at home childminding the kid of a fifteen-year-old drug addict because the kid's adoptive parents were too busy playing some high profile game of 'will-they-won't-they' in the French tabloids, I would want to talk to someone about something else, now and again."

Adam's fingers traced the words _Flaw Valleys_ and he thought of Kate Somerville's smiling brown eyes, her ringing, easy laughter and the gentle way time had run its hands through her dark hair, gilding her with silver. "Yeah, maybe," he conceded.

"Then quit smiling like a goof in my flat and go call her!"

Shrugging on his jacket and tucking the notebook away, Adam thanked Danny as he near-bounded out of the door. He paused, swinging on the hinge with a huge grin. "Same time next week?"

"Aye, aye," Danny waved a hand up from the sink. "You'll be making your own kugel from scratch before you know it."

Adam left, hobbling downstairs with speed and intent. He travelled on the Métro in a well-fed, dreamy daze and fell upon the phone booth outside his apartment building like it was a lover.

"Hello?" Kate's voice sounded crackly down the line, but its warmth reached Adam's body instantly.

"Hi. It's Adam - t-there's nothing wrong! They're fine! I just thought. I thought you might want to talk. That is. If you're free," he winced at his own gabbling and dropped his forehead, hard, against the plastic phone box. "Sorry," he mumbled.

The sound of her laughter and the sound of her breath mingled in a burst like static, like a whisper in his ear. "Adam!" He heard a sound in the background like a teaspoon clinking on a mug. The line hissed again and he imagined her cradling the receiver between her soft, round cheek and her shoulder. "This is a really lovely surprise. Especially so, if you say there's no news this week," Kate chuckled ruefully.

Adam's face was starting to feel stiff from the grin he wore. It was a chilly night and he nuzzled his way into a corner of the booth, his hands in his armpits and the plastic receiver cold on his hot skin. "No, none. I just. I guess I thought maybe you'd want someone to talk to. About your week, or. Or whatever."

"Oh yes," Kate's voice fell into that mocking seriousness that made her eyes sparkle when she spoke. "Hamal is sick to death of me telling him about which chickens laid the biggest eggs and which of the dogs rolled in the smelliest patch of mud."

Adam giggled. "But that's terribly important business. I hope he takes it seriously?"

"Absolutely not. Today he flicked mashed potato in my hair and threw broccoli on the collie." When Adam's laughter faded out, breathless, his ribs aching with joy, she added: "Tell me, Adam, you must have been having a more interesting time in Paris. What was your day like?"

"I, ah," Adam looked down bashfully rather than meeting his own eyes in the reflection in the phone booth plastic. "I made chicken soup. With matzo dumplings."

He thought he heard the sound of Kate sipping her tea, then she sighed like she was letting long-held strains slip from her shoulders. "That sounds wonderful."

"I'd like to cook it for you. Sometime," Adam stood up in shock at letting the admission out and caught the receiver as it slipped from his shoulder. He had replaced it against his burning ear - if he had not quite recovered his composure - in time to hear the end of Kate's reply.

"...I'd like that very much."

**Author's Note:**

> It feels like this should have footnotes. This is the best you'll get:  
> -[The recipe, with sinking kneidlach, that I was using as a reference](https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/perfect-chicken-soup/), thanks to Erinaceina  
> -I'm not sure what Georgian Jewish cuisine would be available in Parisian markets in the '80s. I put lavash and chebureki in so Adam had something to recommend alongside Danny's tastes.  
> -Delia Smith and the Barefoot Contessa would have been known celebrity chefs in the 1980s  
> -[The Khian Sea disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khian_Sea_waste_disposal_incident)  
> -Danny and Jerott's French is insults and terms of endearment all mixed up. Danny calls him a stick of celery and octopus-face, then Danny's little cabbage. Jerott tells Danny to go cook their ass. Danny explains that if they did that, Jerott wouldn't be able to handle the heat. Danny calls Jerott a teddy bear and says they love him, Jerott calls Danny a flea and says he knows.  
> -[Tijuana Beatles](https://www.discogs.com/The-Torero-Band-Lennon-McCartney-Tijuana-Style/release/1253340) is a real thing and you can probably find one in any charity shop vinyl collection  
> -[Character in a 'Carry On' film](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ooh,_matron)  
> -[Le Marais](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marais), the 4e arrondissement, where Danny's flat is, is both the Jewish quarter and the gay quarter  
> -Jerott's been shopping in the [10e arrondissement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistanis_in_France), which is where the Pakistani community set up in the '70s [for Jerott's family history I can but direct you to '[Music is a made-up thing like myth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20167357/chapters/47780128)' the prequel I really need to get back to working on...basically he has a Hindu Pakistani grandparent and his mother is from the Levant, details tbd]  
> -Danny calls Jerott a 'Goyishe Apikoros', which is Yiddish for 'non-Jewish Epicurean/cynic'. I think it can be a pun in the context of food? That's the intention, anyway.  
> -All the food is real, look it up and get as hungry as writing this made me...


End file.
